Page 136 - Education in a Digital World

International Development 123

While these interests are often concerned with the development of commercial
‘for-profit’ markets for digital technology, there is also a sense of encouraging the
increased use of market principles that operate along community-driven ‘not-for-
profit’ lines. Indeed, interventions such as the open knowledge networks and
‘Hole-in-the-wall’ constitute explicit attempts to promote a Western sensibility
of what Yochai Benkler terms ‘the wealth of networks’– i.e. a non-commercial
wealth that is “distinguished by the ‘non-propriety’ and ‘non-market’ basis by
which people are creating the means for others to collaborate and share in the
production of software, research and scholarship, and learning materials” (Willinsky
2009, p.xiii). This promotion of a libertarian sensibility may not be related directly
to profit-making, but is nevertheless a key aspect of the new knowledge economy and
‘fast capitalism’ that underpins it. As such there is clearly a vested interest amongst
governments and corporations in extending and encouraging the adoption of these
networked habits and ‘ways of doing’ in citizens around the world – regardless if an
immediate profit is at stake or not.
Of course, these market-driven motivations of economic modernisation are not
unique to educational or technology initiatives. As Nicolas King (2002, p.763) has
argued, most aspects of the public health development strategies for low-income
countries are similarly “closely associated with the needs of … international com-
merce”. Yet, this ‘economicisation’ of action does appear to be especially prevalent
in the field of educational technology and development, regardless of whether
public or private interests are involved. This is especially the case in the use of
educational technology as a means through which to position low-income countries
as full participants in the global economic order. Here, it could be argued that many
of the educational ICT4D interventions delivered on behalf of intergovernmental
organisations seek to present ‘official’ interventions and solutions – often concerned
with building indigenous IT industry capacity and ‘up-skilling’ future workforces of
developing countries with digitally oriented skills. Similarly, many governments
of low-income countries clearly see educational ICT4D projects as a ready means of
attracting foreign capital and multinational corporate interest into their countries.
Indeed, it could be argued that for many poorer nation-states, the act of allowing
large multinational corporations to work in (and on occasion effectively take control
of) ‘public sector’ areas such as education marks an attempt to encourage further
foreign investment in other areas of the national economy. These governments’
apparent relinquishing of sovereign rights to determine their educational provision
also acts as a signal to the wider economic and political community of a willingness
to act as functioning ‘players’ on the world economic stage. In all these ways, edu-
cational technology is clearly not being driven by purely ‘educational’ motivations in
the narrow sense of enhancing teaching or learning.
All these issues therefore raise questions concerning the compatibility of the self-
interest of the organisations involved in educational ICT4D against the value and
nature of the ‘empowerment’ that some of the most vulnerable and needy citizens
in the world are being offered through digital technology use. As Masschelein and